Cheered on by hundreds of handkerchief-waving employees to the strains of a traditional New Orleans brass band…

…the last external fuel tank scheduled to fly on a space shuttle mission was rolled away from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in preparation for its 900-mile sea journey to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The tank, designated ET-138, was completed by Lockheed Martin workers on June 28.

During a special ceremony Michoud employees were honored by VIPs for building the final external tank and were recognized for the successful delivery over 37 years of 134 ETs to the Space Shuttle Program.

At Kennedy, ET-138 will be mated to the orbiter Endeavour and two solid rocket boosters for the STS-134 launch to the International Space Station targeted for November first.

=============== JOB WELL DONE ===============

A full house crowd at the Langley Research Center's Pearl Young Theater heard Jaiwon Shin, NASA's Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, laud the quality and depth of work being done at the Center. Shin noted the aeronautics research conducted by and advancements made at Langley, including projects like the X-48 blended-wing body jet, largely developed there.

Later, during a special luncheon, Shin encouraged a group of Langley interns to join the next generation of aeronautical engineers.

Brent Collin Bishop:

"I'm learning everything that the researchers are learning. I'm talking to a lot of the managers around the center, and finding out where the technology is, and where they think it’s going in the next fifty years. So, basically, I'm learning every single area that they are focusing on."

Katrina Chapman:

"I'm actually studying biomedical engineering, so I get a lot of questions of why I'm here at Langley, but I'm very interested in aviation. I'd like to merge the two fields, so I'm learning a lot more about helicopters cause, understandably, I have not had that in biomed, but I would like to combine those two and work with my biomedical devices and help out pilots and things like that."

====================== VIRTUAL MOON MISSION ======================

A new NASA video game is offering some daunting challenges to virtual space travelers. On Moonbase Alpha, you and your friends can become part of an exploration team in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement. After a nearby meteor strike cripples your critical life support systems, like oxygen flow, your mission will be to repair and restore those systems to working order.

"Lectures, and writing on a chalk board, and doing homework are amongst the least successful ways to teach people. In games you fail, you do it again; you fail, you do it again, and sometimes you do it a lot of times, but you can keep at it until you get it right. And it doesn’t use up anybody else's time to do that."

For more on this virtual lunar mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/moonbasealpha